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Sean Penn Interviews Raúl Castro

By Marc Lacey November 26, 2008 4:19 pmNovember 26, 2008 4:19 pm

MEXICO CITY — President Raúl Castro of Cuba said in an interview conducted in the weeks before the American presidential election that he would be open to meeting with Barack Obama should he be elected, so long as Mr. Castro’s comrades in the government agreed and the meeting took place on “neutral ground.”

Mr. Castro spoke to Sean Penn, the actor and liberal activist, over tea and then dinner and wine in a seven-hour conversation in Havana that stretched until the wee hours of Oct. 23. Mr. Penn, who several years ago had met with Mr. Castro’s brother, Fidel, provides an account of the conversation in the upcoming issue of The Nation, which is available online.

As for meeting with Mr. Obama, the Cuban president said: “I would have to think about it. I would discuss it with all my comrades in the leadership. Personally, I think it would not be fair that I be the first to visit, because it is always the Latin American presidents who go to the United States first. But it would also be unfair to expect the president of the United States to come to Cuba. We should meet in a neutral place.”

As for the agenda for such a meeting, Mr. Castro said his priority would be to normalize trade.

Mr. Castro suggested the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, on the southeastern edge of Cuba, as a possible meeting spot. “We must meet and begin to solve our problems, and at the end of the meeting, we could give the president a gift,” he said. A suitable memento, he said, would be the American flag flying over the base — a long source of irritation to Cubans, who consider the land at the eastern tip of the island to be theirs.

Mr. Castro, 77, who took over officially for his brother in February, predicted that Mr. Obama would win the election — that is, the younger Castro said, “if he is not murdered before Nov. 4.”

Mr. Castro seemed to be closely following the presidential election and acknowledged that he and his aides scrutinized the candidates’ speeches, especially those delivered to Cuban exiles in Miami.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama said that he would reverse policies imposed during the Bush administration that restrict the visits Cuban-Americans can make to the island and that limit the amount of money they can send to relatives there. He said he would not lift the trade embargo that has been in place for nearly half a century, but would be willing to talk to Mr. Castro under the right conditions.

Mr. Castro said that since his brother fell ill in the summer of 2006, he had twice made overtures in speeches to the United States. But he said the remarks were dismissed by American journalists because he called for any talks to be conducted on an equal footing.

Despite the long years of estrangement between the two countries, Mr. Castro spoke of the regular meetings that the two countries’ militaries have been holding for over a decade at the Guantánamo base to discuss issues of mutual concern. A military-to-military hotline has been established, he said, and 157 meetings have been held, generally on the third Friday of each month.

“We alternate locations between the American base at Guantánamo and in Cuban-held territory,” he said. “We conduct joint emergency-response exercises. For example, we set a fire, and American helicopters bring water from the bay, in concert with Cuban helicopters.”

But Mr. Castro, the country’s longtime defense minister who still favors his uniform, indicated that Cuba was ready should the United States ever choose to use military means to try to change governments on the island. “Iraq is a child’s game compared with what would happen if the U.S. invaded Cuba,” he said.

It’s about time the US ended the trade embargo. Part of being a democracy is allowing other countries to have their own political systems if they so desire. I hope Obama does the right thing and stops punishing this country.

I bet senor penn y el presidente did not visit the worn out, broken down neighboroods of havana y santiago.
Over four decades of “fidelism” (they never really were communist) have turned the jewel of the carribean into a rotting shell of a country.
When they finally run out of castros, cuba will finally bloom into the bella flora it is destined to be.
Viva cuba libre!

first, how did sean penn get into and back from cuba? i thought that such travel was prohibited. second, when did sean penn become a journalist? third, it is so obvious that we need to end the trade embargo against our tiny neighbor and re-establish full diplomatic relations based upon an incentivized plan requiring free speech rights, elections, freedom for dissidents and political prisoners, etc. it is time to awaken from our sleep and realize that the trade embargo has not worked to change things for the people of cuba — it has only punished them.

Fidel was able to come to power because the Batista government was cuddling with the capitalists, casinos and sugarcane, while ordinary poor Cubans were left out in the cold. And by the way, the casinos in Havana had a direct, open involvement of U.S. based mafia, led by Meyer Lansky.

Unfortunately for the Cubans it turned out that Fidel wasn’t a savior that he seemed. The Fidel Castro government failed the citizens of Cuba by its incompetent management of the Cuban economy, its failure to create jobs and improve the standard of living, and its overarching dependence on assistance from the Soviets and other socialist countries.

That’s the history, that’s the past. There comes a time when people have to move on. And the Obama administration may very well be that turning point in the story of Cuba.

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